Survival Kit for the Age of Technology

What would you take with you in a “survival kit” for the age of technology? How can we imagine and act for the future? How can we act in everyday life, here and now? After a week’s LAB at BEK in June 2019, we are proud to give you our two suggestions for a survival kit: A video book co-created by 14 artists and Strategies for Action – tips on how to take control of your own existence on the internet.

﻿STRATEGIES FOR ACTION

Don’t let yourself be exploited and used. These three tips will help you make informed choices.

Opt out of global data surveillance: Prism BreakWe
all have a right to privacy, which you can exercise today by encrypting
your communications and ending your reliance on proprietary services.
Prism Break helps you too choose safe software and digital communication
services like operating systems, e-mail clients, web browsers, file
storage and more.

Help make mass surveillance of entire populations uneconomical! Opt out of global data surveillance programs like PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora.

An emancipatory digital world is possible through actual actions in real world and online, with and for you.

Exposing the Invisible: The KitThe
Kit is a starting point for anybody who is curious to question
information that is false, find information when it is scarce and filter
information when it becomes overwhelming.

In The Kit you’ll find step-by-step methods such as scraping information from websites, using maps to uncover hidden details, and investigating a supply chain to see the journey of a product. Whether your motive is to seek corruption, verify an article or just get to know your neighbourhood, The Kit will teach you how to do so in a safe, and thorough way.

Background

We wade around in terminology, technical gadgetry, new and old habits
of communication, all of which have been spawned by technological
developments. There have been so many new developments in such a short
span of time, that we have not yet come to a conclusion about what the
whole of it means in practice, theory or interaction between ourselves.
We may all have felt – at work, in one’s private life, in all relations
that we are a part of – that our understanding of technology is not
enough. What it means to us and what it does to us is not easy to get an
overview of, especially if we are up to our knees in it. Our time is
scary, frustrating and can move in many directions. What should we know,
what should we do and what ought we to master?

With this as a starting point we made a video book together; a Survival Kit for the Age of Technology. The video book was co-created by artists, creatives and experts suggested within Future DiverCities (FDC) for this LAB at BEK. Read more about the LAB here.